Sharing One Persons Experience……

I want to share with you the story behind the story.  Our church had never done a Habitat house before. This was a total “grass-roots” movement. It started one “Donut Sunday” not too long ago when myself and two other parishioners (all of us in our 30s with young kids, stable lives and a lot to be thankful for!) started talking about how we wanted to do more for those less fortunate.

I think the Pope’s visit, coupled with a Parish mission, Renew 2000 faith-sharing groups and inspiring sermons at our weekly mass, had left many of us with the desire to get involved and help those in need--putting our faith into action.  Two of the people had experience with Habitat for Humanity and suggested looking into the feasibility of our church getting involved in it. We contacted the Habitat for Humanity affiliate in St. Louis and starting finding out details. They were very receptive and encouraging however, from our conversations with them, we began to see what a daunting task this would be.

We plowed ahead and things began to fall into place. Home Depot was partnered with us giving us the security that at least someone would know what he or she was doing. They agreed to provide the House Leader and someone with construction experience who could be there every day to lead the process. They also wanted to do a Blitz Build, which would mean the project would only last 15 days, August 5th through the 19th.  This appealed to us for a number of reasons. That left us with raising the money to build half a house, lining up the volunteers to build the house and feeding the crew--approximately 15-20 people a day for the two-week period.  And, it had to be done quickly!

People ask us, “How did we raise the money and how did we get people to give up their vacation and weekends to work on the house?”  We tell them simply--we just asked! We wrote one letter, spoke on one Sunday and we raised more money then we needed and had more then enough people sign up to help. That is the real story behind this. Many people want to help and get involved but they don’t want to organize it, and they don’t want to be doing it alone.  A call for help from a well-organized group at an organization where they are already somewhat comfortable, like a church or a school, makes it relatively easy to get involved. If we had decided that this project would be too hard to organize or we wouldn’t have enough people interested, James Boyd might not be moving into this house. We took a risk.  People got involved and, as always, found that the more you give the more you receive.

I have never been prouder of any project I have been involved in and feel honored to have been a part of this. It isn’t often that one gets to see the goodness of people, and I have been seeing it for 15 days now and counting. It has changed me forever and those around me, and all we had to do was ask.

This letter was written by Sue Derdeyn, now a Habitat Board member, who also serves as the chair of Habitat’s Interfaith Outreach Committee.  It was written to Channel 4, thanking them for a story they did on the Ste. Genevieve-Home Depot home, during a mini-Blitz Build.  It is a testament to one individual’s personal experience, and that of their faith based organization.